One of my favorite aspects of working in live gaming is witnessing the sometimes silly, and sometimes amazing, always unexpected things that players do: the “they did what?!” moments. As Stage Manager back at HQ, I don’t often get to see them first-hand: I rely on the crew to let me know what is going on out in the game. I love getting amusing messages like “a player just bribed a kid to sword fight me so they could get my code while I was distracted” or “they are going for Boris bikes: rookie mistake!” Games are always more exciting when players are doing what they do best: playing.

Here are a couple of my favourite stories as told by our crew. This first one is from Citydash and it shows just how ingenious our players can be:

In one of the corporate games I was chasing a player and we ended up running around bins, basically in deadlock, so he grabbed one of the wheelie bins to cover his front code and started running backwards. It was really entertaining to watch a guy in a suit walking around with a bin so I let him off! (He put the bin back after!)

Judith

The next one is from Undercover, our spy game in Leicester Square:

I had a team during Undercover who came dressed in a suit and dress and somehow in their tiny bags managed to change outfit THREE times into various combinations of shirts, jeans and hats. Was very disappointed when they came second as they were deserving winners on disguising alone.

Kieran

But my favourite story of all time has to be this one from Shadow Over Shoreditch:

When we played the Halloween edition in Shoreditch, I got the park. I saw a team of Ghostbusters running along and chased them, but they were looking to get my number and started running sideways in circles. It ended up with them running a circle around me, and me - dressed as a big white ghost - trying to get one of their codes but all ended in stalemate. However, I can imagine how crazy it would have looked to an outsider: four Ghostbusters running circles around a screaming large white banshee!

Dan

Now these are some of my favourites so far, and we’re sure to collect lots of new stories this year. YOU might be the player that makes me say “they did what?!” over the radio. I hope you are!